Kerryn Williams
These days, there is widespread acceptance of the concept of gender equality. Most girls grow up believing they are just as "good" as boys, and the majority of people agree that women and men should have the same opportunities.
This is a far cry from how things were half a century ago. Before 1968, women didn't have the right to permanent jobs in the public sector. Equal pay for work of equal value wasn't won until 1972. In the early 1960s, any child born out of wedlock still had the word "illegitimate" stamped on his or her birth certificate. It was still taken for granted that men should, at all times, have automatic sexual access to their wives, regardless of consent, simply because they were married.
The mass women's liberation movement of the late 1960s and early '70s — known as the "second wave" of feminism, won sweeping advances for women, culminating in a wide range of reforms in the early 1970s.
The movement had many facets and involved large numbers of women. In the 1970s, working women's centres were established and working women's conferences held. Large numbers of women joined trade unions to challenge the sexist ideas within them and to force them to take on the struggle for the rights of working women.
Women's health centres and refuges were established, along with feminist journals and women's studies courses at universities.
The women's liberation movement was part of the more generalised upsurge of struggle by the working class, specially oppressed groups, and the mass movement against the Vietnam War. The deep and widespread radicalisation of that period successfully challenged some of the fundamental, all-pervasive sexist ideas of previous times. The legacy of this very much remains today.
However, while there may be widespread recognition of the concept of gender equality, women's lives are now getting harder, not easier. The gap between average male and female wages is increasing. Child care is unaffordable for many women.
A Sydney University study, published on February 23, found that 57% of workplaces don't offer paid maternity leave, and that women on low incomes are less likely to have access to paid maternity leave than high-income mothers.
Essentially, the second wave of feminism won formal equality for women, but what it did not achieve was full social and economic equality — something that is impossible within the capitalist system.
Today's attacks on women are part and parcel of the broader neo-liberal offensive by the capitalist ruling class to further shift wealth from the poor to the rich through attacks on wages and conditions, privatisation of public utilities and cuts in government funding to social services.
This is accompanied by the ideological drive to reinforce women's responsibility in the home — so that it is individual women, rather than the state, who are seen as responsible for provision of social welfare services. This was explicitly expressed by Prime Minister John Howard at the Family Forum at Clayfied Girls College in 1998, when he said that it is "an undeniable fact that stable, united families represent the most efficient welfare system that any nation has devised".
Women's double burden
This doesn't mean that the ruling class seeks to drive women en masse from the workforce. This would lead to a major shortage in skilled labour — already a concern of the federal government, which now wants workers to continue working beyond retirement!
Women workers provide a super-exploitable pool of labour to help keep down the wages and conditions of the working class as a whole. In addition, most working-class families rely on two sources of income in order to survive, without which there would be an explosive response.
In any case, it would be impossible to convince the majority of women workers that they should just stay home and attend to their domestic chores rather than seek paid work — because the ideological gains of the women's liberation movement remain too entrenched. However, attempts are made to convince women that our primary role is in the home, and so carry the double burden of domestic labour and paid employment.
On the other hand, the neoliberal austerity drive increases the pressures on the family unit. Capitalism is faced with the irresolvable contradiction of needing to maintain the family institution for provision of welfare, but also depriving most families of the income levels necessary for them to perform this function.
The contradiction between women's permanent place in the workforce and the placing of the economic burden of reproducing labour power — including the new generations of workers — on the family, is reflected in some of the debates around provision of paid maternity leave.
The ruling class is deeply concerned about the falling fertility rate, and the fact that 25% of women are not having children. But this is not at all surprising given the enormous costs of raising a child and the difficulties for women in balancing paid work and domestic responsibilities given the high cost of childcare fees, lack of paid maternity leave, lack of job security when returning to the workforce after having a child and so on.
While this contradiction has forced 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ of the ruling class to endorse some sort of national paid maternity leave scheme, the scope of these proposals has been severely limited. The focus has been on paid maternity rather than parental leave, reinforcing the assumption that women should always be the primary care-givers and discouraging male parents from taking greater responsibility for a child's upbringing.
The other issue is who should pay for maternity leave. Any onus on employers to foot the bill has largely been excluded from the public debate.
To date we are still waiting for a national paid maternity leave scheme of any description. Meanwhile, a number of trade unions have made advances in securing the inclusion of paid maternity leave in their industrial agreements. For example, the National Tertiary Education Union won a landmark victory at Sydney University with its latest agreement securing 36 weeks of paid maternity leave.
Women's liberation today
The lasting gains of the second wave and the concrete advances women have won through past struggles have implications for how we can further the struggle for women's liberation today. In addition to the generalised acceptance of the concept of gender equality, the second wave has left another important legacy — it drew large numbers of women into struggle.
Women continue to be active in, and lead, movements and campaigns on many different levels.
Despite the lasting ideological gains of the second wave, sexism and misogyny are still prolific in the media and culture. The commercial use of women's body image is a prime example.
Contemporary capitalist society is marked by the commercialisation and commodification of all aspects of human relations and life. However, the content of advertising and popular culture is very mixed. A wider range of representations of women now have to be employed in the pursuit of profit. Many of these seek to tap into the broad acceptance gender equality, which is reflective of the actual changes in women's position that have taken place.
The nature of the current attacks on women's living and working conditions also affect our terrain of struggle. The fact that these attacks are part of the overall neoliberal offensive make it much more likely that the fight for women's liberation will be part of broader struggles, rather than specific "women's campaigns".
While a small layer of women have become leaders of the capitalist class, and a layer beyond that fully identify with the capitalist system, the overwhelming majority of women are bearing the brunt of the massive attacks on the working class as a whole. These intensifying class divisions make the class character of women's oppression even starker today.
Further, the global divide of women's oppression is deepening. Imperialism is furthering the gap between women in the advanced capitalist countries and women in the underdeveloped world. Not only is the neoliberal drive worsening economic conditions for women in the poorest countries, it is reinforcing attempts by reactionary forces to deny women even formal equality.
This means that the fight for women's liberation cannot be separated from the range of fronts on which neoliberalism is being resisted. Fighting to rebuild militant trade unions will be essential to winning greater wage equality for women. Opposition to privatisation is necessary to defend public funding of welfare and services that lift some of the burden from women's shoulders.
Opposing imperialism's occupation of Iraq and the extension of its war drive are critical to defending the rights of women in the least developed countries.
The struggle for women's liberation is alive and well, even though it doesn't quite look the same as it did in the 1960s and '70s. The challenge is to deepen and extend this struggle on all fronts in order to win what the second wave did not — real liberation in all areas of life and for all women across the world.
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, March 10, 2004.
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